The Last Time I Saw My Father Cry

The last time I saw my father cry, he was peeling oranges at the kitchen sink.

 

The afternoon sun fell through the window in slanted lines, striping his face with light and shadow. I was twelve, still learning that silence could be a kind of language.

 

He didn’t sob. He didn’t make a sound. His shoulders just trembled. A drop of juice ran down his wrist like a tear trying to find its way home.

 

“Did the orange sting your eyes?” I asked. He laughed too quickly; the kind of laugh people use when they’re trying to convince the world that they’re fine.

 

Later, I found the wastebasket full of peels, not neatly stacked but crushed, squeezed, torn. The air smelled of something too sweet to be innocent.

 

That night, I heard my mother humming in the next room, a song I’d never heard before, low and tired, like a prayer that had forgotten its words. I think that’s when I understood that grown-ups cry in secret not because they’re strong, but because they’re afraid of being seen breaking.

 

Years passed. I became the one standing at the sink. The light still came in on a slant. The peels still piled up. My reflection in the window looked like him: the same jaw, the same eyes, maybe even the same sadness hiding behind them.

 

Last week, while slicing oranges for breakfast, a drop of juice slipped into my eye. It burned. I laughed too quickly. My daughter looked at me and asked if the orange was too sour.

 

I told her yes.

 

What I wanted to say was no; the orange was fine. Memory has a flavor, and sometimes it finds its way back through the smallest wounds.

 

The last time I saw my father cry, I didn’t understand what he was losing: time, and with it the small, private ways he held us steady. Now I do.

​

​